


i'd just as soon kill you myself, he says

by Wagandea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caning, Character Study, Dom Albus Dumbledore, Dom/sub, Hair Kink, M/M, Sub Gellert Grindelwald, not compliant with Fantastic Beasts at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:34:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagandea/pseuds/Wagandea
Summary: They'll leave this out of the history books; how after his capture, Dark Wizard Grindelwald spent the better part of his life playing lap dog to the great Albus Dumbledore.





	i'd just as soon kill you myself, he says

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine this in a sort of vague AU where Albus brought Gellert back to Britain with him after his defeat in 1945, rather than seeing him imprisoned in Nurmengard. I rather like playing with these two as older men, but there's so little time in canon to work with, sadly.
> 
> A few thank yous: To OllieTamale and her Gellert for being the inspiration for the original drabble this was based on; and to bizarrebird for coming up with this scenario for Gellert being captured with me!)

                    i.

There is generally a chess table, as so many of Albus’s meetings with his chosen adversaries go. Always muggle pieces; when Albus takes Gellert’s queen he toys with the piece idly, and fights to ignore the smile playing at Gellert’s lips. They are both distracted. The game is significant and it isn’t.

“I haven’t felt properly matched in forty six years,” Albus confesses, and drops his gaze and the piece to the side of the board. He’s been sitting on these words a long time. He doesn’t want to look at Gellert, who he taught the English names of the pieces to so long ago, könig to king, bauer to pawn. The game had been a sort of intellectual foreplay then, eventually turning into regular foreplay.

I haven’t felt properly matched in forty six years, Albus says, and they are no longer talking about chess. Gellert lets Albus capture every single one of his pieces before he can get to the king, and that strategy must take more effort than one to win. (Albus wonders, when they are playing these games, if this was planned out too. In the same movements, Gellert defies his capture and then embraces it.)

 

                    ii.

He’s always had this peculiar fascination with hair. The color, the texture, the way it tangles under his hand. Gellert’s hair is still as curly and blond as it was all those years ago, and sometimes Albus thinks this thing started that summer, entranced as he was by that boy’s golden halo.

Albus shapes a curl with his thumb, winds a strand idly around his forefinger. It’s gentle; for now he’s placated with kind petting, and then Gellert relaxes, his back pressed skin to skin to Albus’s chest. In that moment Albus’s grip on Gellert’s hair tightens, sharply tugs until Gellert’s head is lolling back onto Albus’s shoulder, neck exposed.

Gellert makes a noise. Albus sighs softly and maintains his grip. As an afterthought, Albus reaches around with his other hand to touch him.

 

                    iii.

Albus does not generally want to hurt Gellert. The cane sings through the air once, twice, three times. There are exceptions to every rule. He is strict, but Albus tries very hard not to be cruel. He settles back, cane lowered at his side.

It’s a firm hand he slides down Gellert’s back, long fingers splayed out, and does not acknowledge the hiss of pain from his query when his rings brush over the light raised welts. He’s examining his handiwork, the pretty blushed lines on pale skin. For not the first time that evening, Albus thinks Gellert is beautiful.

“All right?“ he asks, finally, and Gellert shifts, then laughs a little under his breath.

“My knees hurt,” he complains, and Albus knows it’s more for show than anything else. He settles forward on his palms. “I am not fifteen anymore, Albus, I cannot reasonably be expected to kneel on your floor all night.”

Albus smiles gently, and raises the cane again.

 

                    iv.

Sometimes, Albus thinks there should be punishment in this too. Gellert has certainly made enough sly comments about it, vain attempts to get under Albus’s skin--about Albus bending him over his desk and reaching for the cane like Gellert is an errant schoolboy. But Albus is sixty four, not eighteen, and he is no longer so easily riled up.

Instead, he considers the teasing with a grim sort of contemplation.

In the end, he reaches for the cane again, not because of the sting, but because of the way Gellert hardens at the touch of it. It is not a punishment, Albus thinks, if it is enjoyed. The greater punishment would be not touching him at all.

 

                    v.

“Tell me, Albus,” Gellert asks from his spot on the floor, always  _ perfectly _ obedient until he opens his mouth, “was capturing and holding me yourself intended to be a mercy for me, or a sentence upon yourself?”

The answer, of course, is a little of both, and the opposite; it’s a reprieve to his own conscience to know that Gellert is not rotting in a prison cell despite all he has done, and it’s also a punishment in its own right to force Gellert to kneel tamed and subservient to the wizard who defeated him.

“Oh, my friend, if only it were so simple as that,” he answers gravely in return, and traces his forefinger down the line of Gellert’s throat.

He wears a chain about his neck that binds his power, renders his magic unusable. Albus enchanted it himself, but when he pulls sharply on it to bring Gellert to his feet, it’s with the knowledge that both of them are hoping it might break under tension.

 


End file.
